» Mon Dec 12, 2011 9:09 am I mean sure, the technology is getting better, so we can expect better bigger graphics, more environment, more "candy," but for the most part the concept hasn't changed much since people played Dungeons and Dragons with pencil and paper.
Unless you are saying that people don't want this, that the modern audience has become too ADD, too violent, to obsessed with FPS action and explosions and not so much the substance, in which case I've heard that argument made and it has its merits.
I would also counter there is a significant demographic of young advlt gen-X/gen-Y people starting families to consider, families with young children with their own ideas of what they demand their parents consume for them vicariously, and we might therefore account for this as byproduct of youthful immaturity? Nothing inherently wrong or dangerous with that...
I prefer to think of it as the genre of entertainment is evolving. So, some prefer true RPG and some prefer action or sports or whatever. It is simple supply and demand. The agenda of corporations doesn't govern demand. Yes, we'll buy whatever offerings look promising just to evaluate them by our standards, but nothing these major players contribute is "genre redefining" in itself.
Corporations contribute to the genre. But if they continuously miss the boat, it isn't a sign the "RPG industry" is changing, but rather, most who truly represent what that industry represent may be changing providers!
Not to suggest Bethesda has "missed" with Skyrim. I think it provides a very professional presentation for a toolset that is the real power behind their market share. If they ever release it that is.
Now, the agenda of pure greed that is our modern multi-national corporate materialist environment, where man is only worth what you can use him for or steal or torture to extort from him in the short term before he is discarded, there we do see a significant road block.
Because much of the interest in this market depends on a community of modders having the means to produce their art, an economy which fails to provide for this will see continued diminishing returns.
In a responsible civil society we would use our abundant and efficient technological means to assure no citizen was denied secure shelter, healthy food, clean water, and modern medicine for any reason, including absence of a present occupation for another who will pay for these things.
Our society prefers the carrot of forced labor. So, in spite of TRILLIONS in defense debt, we would leave our people completely defenseless against the modern threat of biotechnology, because doing the job in that regard would imply secure infrastructure which would give people housing without work, which would collapse the housing bubble even further, and remove another crucial burden of debt they leverage to keep the population enslaved.
When modders have a place to live and food to eat and access to medicine for themselves and their families, we will see increasing wealth of equity in that industry. So long as we think we can squeeze homeless slaves for intellectual labor, only diminishing returns.
Any bean counter who tells you otherwise is a crappy economist indeed.
